Brhat | As Seen on TV | Film Review: Dhurandhar (2025)

Spoiler Warning: This review reveals significant plot details.

Dhurandhar (2025) arrives as a refreshing reminder of what Indian cinema is capable of, as another feather in Writer and Director Aditya Dhar’s cap. Set in Pakistan, the film navigates the shadowy world of an Indian intelligence operative, Hamza, tasked with infiltrating the violent criminal underworld of Lyari in Karachi. As he rises within the ranks of violent gang networks tied to politics and cross-border terrorism, the film traces the slow, corrosive cost of espionage on the protagonist’s identity and morality. It is a spy thriller with its high-stakes drama grounded in a morally complex, politically charged terrain, interweaving fiction with real terror events and historical fault lines. With record-breaking box-office collections, Dhurandhar has ushered in a definitive cultural moment, setting a new benchmark for how Bollywood engages with these themes. The quality of storytelling, performances, and filmmaking stands among the finest that Indian cinema has produced in recent years, with the lead actors delivering phenomenal performances that elevate the film.

Although the film opens with a disclaimer asserting its fictional nature, the striking parallels to real-life figures and events lend the on-screen narrative a disquieting sense of authenticity. That being said, however, a significant portion of Dhurandhar does indeed draw inspiration directly from the real and deeply contested history of Pakistani politics and terrorism, Karachi’s gang wars and violence, Islamic extremism, the India-Pakistan conflict, and loosely, Indian intelligence operations. Moreover, the characters inspired by Ajit Doval, Rehman Dakait (aka Abdul Rehman Baloch, a Lyari gangster and founding member of the Peoples Aman Committee), Nabil Gabol and Nadia Gabol (a Pakistani politician and his daughter), and Chaudhry Aslam (the controversial Sindh Police officer), among others, lend weight to the screenplay. Additionally, the narrative architecture of Dhurandhar is deliberately braided with real-world terror events, a choice that deepens its dramatic weight while pushing the viewer toward moral reckoning rather than passive consumption. The film opens with a chilling recreation of Ajit Doval’s negotiations during the 1999 Kandahar hijack by Harkat-ul-Mujahideen, immediately grounding its fiction in lived national trauma. The same is done in the depiction of the 2001 Parliament attack carried out by five Jaish-e-Mohammed terrorists. The film also depicts the large-scale influx of counterfeit Indian currency from Pakistan, laying bare a network of criminals and the staggering corruption of senior bureaucrats and ministers who leave the nation dangerously exposed—an arc that is disturbingly firmly grounded in reality. It then traces the funding, planning, and intelligence lapses that culminated in the 26/11 Mumbai attacks, eliciting yet another visceral reaction. The sequence culminates in a moving focus on Hamza’s feelings of despair, guilt, and crushing self-reproach that swim inside him in the aftermath of the 26/11 attacks and his helplessness heightened by his surroundings, offering rare insight into the conflicted world of an undercover agent.

The film momentarily pauses to present verbatim audio and transcripts of conversations between the 26/11 Mumbai terror attackers and their ISI handlers. Typed starkly on a red screen, laced with references to Allah and kaafirs and jannat, it is juxtaposed with images of a burning and terror-stricken Mumbai, thoroughly unsettling the viewer. The dots can then be easily connected between Pakistani gang violence, organized crime, and cross-border terrorism targeting India. The film also paints a starkly accurate portrait of Pakistani society steeped in generational hostility toward India, while subtly exposing the role of Islamic extremism as an accelerant that feeds crime, radicalization, and violence. In doing so, Dhurandhar transforms history into indictment, leaving the viewer unsettled not just by what is shown, but by how recognizable—and unresolved—it all feels. At the end of the day, Pakistan is, in fact, infuriatingly, a state that still continues to enjoy international aid and support.

Another one of the film’s most harrowing sequences involves the torture of another alleged Indian, staged with a very deliberate and masterful symbolism. The man lies on a stretcher, his body methodically pierced with tens of hooks driven through his skin, including that of his face—a chilling visual metaphor for Pakistan’s long-articulated doctrine of “bleeding India by a thousand cuts.” Beyond its visceral barbarity, the scene functions as a grim moment of reckoning for the protagonist, confronting him—and the audience—with the fate that awaits should his cover be exposed.

The film does so many things right. First and foremost, the screenplay is deeply researched, and the attention to detail paid is visible in its every frame. One of these little details is an easter egg in the film’s opening, the invocation of a śloka from the Bhagavad Gīta. The verse, from Chapter 2, Shloka 37, reads:

hato vā prāpsyasi swargaṁ jitvā vā bhokṣhyase mahīm | tasmād uttiṣhṭha kaunteya yuddhāya kṛita-niśhchayaḥ ||

It translates to "If you fight, you will either be slain on the battlefield and go to the celestial abodes, or you will gain victory and enjoy the kingdom on earth. Therefore, arise with determination, O son of Kunti, and be prepared to fight."

In hindsight, it is a profound articulation of the inner psychology of a warrior, which subtly hints at the protagonist’s mindset and the deeper rationale of deśa bhakti. It embellishes the film with a spiritual undercurrent: ideas of duty, morality, and sacrifice, rooted in the concepts of dharma yuddha and svadharma, setting the tone for its ethical moorings from the start.

Visually, Dhar achieves the stylized ‘Pakistani Muslim’ aesthetic blended with a retro Bollywood vibe with finesse, and almost luxuriates in it. For instance, the streets of Pakistan acquire an almost nostalgic character as a ghazal sung by Ghulam Ali drifts through a tea stall. Next, the film does not shy away from violence and gore, with the provocative brutality driving home the true nature of its characters and the entrenched lawlessness of Karachi’s slum landscape. In doing so, the film situates Pakistani terrorism within a broader continuum of crime, chaos, poverty and radicalization, using visceral imagery to trace its origins rather than soften them.

The soundtrack of Dhurandhar deserves a special mention — not for its commercial success, which comes as no surprise, but for how it integrates seamlessly with the visuals, enhancing the mood and momentum rather than demanding attention for its own sake. The album’s appeal lies in its unselfconscious eclecticism: blending hip-hop with techno-qawwali, Hindustani ghazals, Hindi and Punjabi instrumentals, and so many more experimental genres, which makes it feel contemporary, youthful, and alive.

The film is deeply immersive, its formidable three-hour-and-thirty-four-minute runtime breezing by on account of the strength of its gripping and sophisticated storytelling and unwavering narrative focus. It never feels bloated, indulgent, excessive, or even lazy, and maintains its clear sense of purpose from beginning to end. What distinguishes Dhurandhar from most films is its conscious rejection of contemporary excess: where the typical Indian film often relies on hollow hero elevations, gravity-defying action, blind hero worship, and overpowering background scores; Dhurandhar chooses restraint and class. Its action remains grounded, controlled, and effective precisely because it resists spectacle for spectacle’s sake.

Indian cinema must approach the Partition, terror attacks, centuries of Islamic rule, the British rule and other civilizational traumas with the same seriousness, moral clarity, and craft that Western cinema brings to Holocaust narratives — centering victims with care, interrogating the intent of aggressors without apology, and delivering films that are artistically rigorous, technically impeccable, and respected by world cinema. In this regard, Dhurandhar decisively raises the bar. Apart from being a finely crafted and technically profound film, Dhurandhar engages head-on with politically charged tropes, lived history, and the machinery of terrorism in a manner that feels meaningful. It does not treat these elements as incidental or use them for shock value, but rather as a thematic thread that actively shapes characters, choices, and outcomes. By embedding its drama within real geopolitical fault lines, the film invites the viewer to reckon with uncomfortable truths—about ideology, institutional failure, and morality —catapulting what might have been an ordinary espionage film into a work that resonates politically and civilizationally. All in all, it is reassuring that Bollywood has come such a long way in the wake of a shifting cultural and political Overton window — from its earlier incarnation as “Urduwood,” marked by terror apologia and Islamic whitewashing, to an industry that is now more self-assured and unafraid to confront uncomfortable truths. Dhurandhar is far more than forgettable entertainment; it demands engagement and continues to linger long after the final frame fades to black.